At 07:16 PM 9/19/2002 -0700, you wrote: >Still don't believe me? Ever seen those weighted bicycle wheels with >handles on them, used for high school physics demonstrations? You spin up >the wheel, and hand it to someone sitting in the teacher's swivel chair; >tilting it will make them rotate one way or the other due to >precession. Now, if you make a new shaft that holds two such wheels and a >plate with 3-4 roller blade wheels to couple the tires, so that they >always turn in opposite directions at equal speeds, you can demonstrate to >yourself that such a device has absolutely no gyroscopic stability -- it >completely lacks precession, which is what keeps a gyroscope or top from >falling. In fact, the contrarotating wheels have no more resistance to >tilting when spinning than they do when dead still.
Ok, I need to find some spinning wheels on shafts to convince myself of that. I can easily admit I may not be thinking about it correctly... Does it still apply when the spinning masses are on the same shaft, but NOT coupled? I can see how directly coupling them could let them trade off forces, but two wheels (or rotors) spinning independently? John Carmack _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
